SYNTAX of COUNTIF Function in Google Sheets

criterion – the condition that should be met for a cell to be counted.

The criterion could be:

a number.

a text string, such as “Apple” or “Banana”.

a cell reference (such as A1 or B1).

an expression such as “=100” or “>100” or “<100”. Note that in the case of equal to, you are not required to use the equal to sign. You can simply use the number in double quotes.

The range of cells could contain numbers or text strings.

If the range contains numbers, then the criteria could use comparison operators (>, <, =, <>). For example, to count the number of students who scored above 75 in a subject, you can use “>75” as the criterion. The function would check each number in the ‘range’ for this criterion. Note that when you use an operator with a number, you need to enclose it in double quotes.

If the range contains text strings, the criteria can be the text string within double quotes (e.g., “Apple”) or can be a cell reference that contains the text string.

You can also use wildcard characters in case of text criterion. For example, to count cells that contain Apple or Apples, you can use Apple* as the criterion.

Now let’s have a look at some example of using COUNTIF Function in Google Sheets.

COUNTIF Function in Google Sheets – Examples

Here are six examples of using the COUNTIF function in Google Sheets.

Example 1 – Counting the Number of Students with More than 75 Marks

Suppose you have a list of students with the marks scored in a test.

Here is the formula that will give you the count of students who scores above 75.

=COUNTIF($B$2:$B$14,“>75”)

Note:

The condition needs to be within double quotes.

You can also have the criterion value in a cell and use that cell reference. For example, if the criterion is in cell C2, then you can use the formula: =COUNTIF($B$2:$B$14,“>”&C2). When you use a cell reference, you still need to have the operator in double quotes and use & to join it with the cell reference.

Example 2 – Counting All the Transaction Records of the US

Suppose you have the transaction data as shown below:

Here is the formula that will give us the number of transactions for the US:

Note:

Since the criterion is text, there is no need to use the equal to sign. For example, in this example, the condition is that the country should be equal to the US, so you can simply use “US”.

You can also have the criterion in a cell. In that case, you can simply use the cell reference. For example, if the criterion is in cell D2, you can use the formula: =COUNTIF($B$2:$B$13,D2)

Example 3 – Counting All the Records Except US

Suppose you have the same transaction data (used in example 3) and you want to count all the transaction records except for those of the US.

Here is the formula that will do this:

=COUNTIF($B$2:$B$13,“<>US”)

The above formula would count all the transaction except the ones where the country is ‘US’.

Example 4 – Counting All Empty/Blank Cells in a Range

If you have a huge dataset and you want to get a count of missing records or empty or blank cells, you can use the COUNTIF function to do this.

Suppose you have a dataset as shown below:

Here is the formula that will give you the total number of empty or blank cells in it:

=COUNTIF($C$2:$C$13,“”)

In this example, the criteria used is “” (double quotes). When only double quotes are used as criteria, it counts only those cells that are empty/blank. Note that if there is a cell that looks blank but has a space character in it, then it will not be counted by this formula.

Example 5 – Counting All Non-empty Cells in a Range

In this example, the criteria used is “<>” (not equal to sign within double quotes). This criterion means that the cells are not equal to an empty string. Note that if there is a cell that looks blank but has a space character in it, then it will be counted by this formula.

Example 6 – Count All Instances where a Keyword Appears

Sometimes, you may have to deal with data that contains variations of the same name or item. For example, in the data below, there are variations of Apple as Apple, Apples, Fruit – Apple.

Here is the formula you can use to count the total number of cells with the keyword Apple:

=COUNTIF($A$2:$A$13,“*Apple*”)

In the above example, the criterion used is *Apple*. An asterisk (*) is a wildcard character that represents any number of characters. So *Apple* would count any cell that has the text Apple in it and it could be flanked by any number of characters on either side.

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